Quality, disparity reports show little healthcare improvement for minorities
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released two healthcare reports last Friday showing that overall in the years 2002 through 2008, quality, access and disparities in healthcare for most racial and ethnic groups improved minimally, if at all.
According to Ernest Moy, medical officer at the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the AHRQ, which is part of HHS, the 2011 National Healthcare Disparities Report and the 2011 National Healthcare Quality Report are congressionally mandated and have been produced annually since 2003.
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The reports are based on over 40 different national sources and include around 250 healthcare measures, showing the persistent challenges in access to care faced by most racial and ethnic groups, said Moy. Fifty percent of the measures that tracked disparities in healthcare access showed no improvement between the years 2002 and 2008, while 40 percent of those measures were getting worse.
Specifically, for 2002 through 2008, Latinos, American Indians and Alaska Natives experienced worse access to care than Whites on more than 60 percent of the access measures, while African Americans experienced worse access on slightly more than 30 percent of the access measures. Asian Americans experienced worse access to care than non-Latino Whites on 17 percent of the access measures.
“What is surprising is that on the quality report, it was found that overall healthcare quality actually improved slowly for the general population," said Moy. "There has been very little change on these reports for a long time and we are actually seeing some disparities getting slightly smaller finally. We were expecting to not see any changes. However, with quality and access, there are still the gaps that we expected between different races and minorities.”
The data contained in the two reports predate the Affordable Care Act; however, some provisions in the new healthcare law are aimed at improving healthcare quality and addressing healthcare disparities. The HHS Action Plan to Reduce Health Disparities, which was announced in April 2011, outlines goals and actions HHS will take to reduce health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, building on efforts made possible by the ACA and other ongoing private-sector and state-led initiatives.
[See also: AHRQ report shows little improvement in states' healthcare quality]
To view the National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report, visit: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/qrdr11.htm.
Follow HFN Associate Editor Kelsey Brimmer on Twitter @kbrimmerhfn.
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